KARL: This morning, a "This Week" exclusive, former Vice President
Dick Cheney, the administration's harshest critic...

CHENEY: The president's been largely silent. Half-measures keep
you half-exposed. The White House must stop dithering.

KARL: ... with no apologies of his own.

CHENEY: I was and remain a strong proponent of our enhanced
interrogation program.

KARL: National security, Iran, politics, and...

BIDEN: Iraq, I mean, it's going to be one of the great achievements
of this administration.

KARL: ... Dick Cheney takes on the current vice president, only on
"This Week." Then, a Washington thaw.

OBAMA: I'm going to spend some time listening.

KARL: But can bipartisanship survive the politics of the moment?

PALIN: We need a commander-in-chief, not a professor of law
standing at the lectern.

KARL: That and the rest of the week's politics on our roundtable
with George Will, Peter Beinart of the Council on Foreign Relations, the
New Yorker's Jane Mayer, and Paul Gigot of the Wall Street Journal.

And as always, the Sunday funnies.

LETTERMAN: John McCain knew that it was Sarah Palin's birthday, and
he did something very nice for her. He bought her a Toyota.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: From the heart of the nation's capital, "This Week" with
ABC's congressional correspondent, Jonathan Karl, live from the Newseum
on Pennsylvania Avenue.

KARL: Joining me now, former Vice President Dick Cheney.

Mr. Vice President, welcome to "This Week."

CHENEY: Good morning, John.

KARL: Now, you have been unflinching in your criticism of this
administration's handling of terrorism, counterterrorism. Most
recently, talking about the Christmas Day bomber, you said, "It is clear
once again that President Obama is trying to pretend that we are not at
war." Now, this morning, we have heard from the current vice president,
Joe Biden, directly in response to that. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: We're pursuing that war with a vigor like it's never been
seen before. We've eliminated 12 of their top 20 people. We have taken
out 100 of their associates. We are making -- we've sent them
underground. They are, in fact, not able to do anything remotely like
they were in the past. They are on the run. I don't know where Dick
Cheney has been.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KARL: Your response?

CHENEY: Well, my reference to the notion that the president was
trying to avoid treating this as a war was in relation to his initial
response when we heard about the Christmas underwear bomber...

KARL: Right.

CHENEY: ... up in Detroit, when he went out and said this was the
act of an isolated extremist. No, it wasn't. And we found out over
time, obviously -- and he eventually changed his -- his assessment --
but that, in fact, this was an individual who'd been trained by Al
Qaida, who'd been part of a larger conspiracy, and it was closer to
being an act of war than it was the act of an isolated extremist.

It's the mindset that concerns me, John. I think it's -- it's very
important to go back and keep in mind the distinction between handling
these events as criminal acts, which was the way we did before 9/11, and
then looking at 9/11 and saying, "This is not a criminal act," not when
you destroy 16 acres of Manhattan, kill 3,000 Americans, blow a big hole
in the Pentagon. That's an act of war.

KARL: Well -- well...

CHENEY: And what the administration was slow to do was to come to
that -- that recognition that we are at war, not dealing with criminal
acts. And as I say, my response there dealt specifically to the fact
the president called it an isolated extremist. It was not.

KARL: Well, I want to get to that notion of treating this as a law
enforcement action, but what the administration will say is, look at
what they have done, 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, doubling,
tripling, and maybe even more the drone attacks on the tribal areas in
Pakistan on Al Qaida targets. They say that they are actually
dedicating more resources to the fight against Al Qaida than you were.

CHENEY: Well, I -- you know, I'm a complete supporter of what
they're doing in Afghanistan. I think the president made the right
decision to send troops into Afghanistan. I thought it took him a while
to get there.

Having Stan McChrystal now in charge in Afghanistan I think is an
excellent choice. General McChrystal's one of the most able officers I
know. I'm glad they're doing what they're doing in Afghanistan. I'm not
a critic of what they're doing, in terms of how they're dealing with
that situation.

But I do see repeatedly examples that there are key members in the
administration, like Eric Holder, for example, the attorney general, who
still insists on thinking of terror attacks against the United States as
criminal acts as opposed to acts of war, and that's a -- that's a huge
distinction.

KARL: OK, before we get to Eric Holder, a couple more things from
the vice president. He's been out responding preemptively to you. One
thing he said we heard in the open, that he believes Iraq may ultimately
prove to be one of the greatest achievements of the Obama administration.

CHENEY: Well, I -- I guess I shouldn't be surprised by my friend,
Joe Biden. I'm glad he now believes Iraq is a success. Of course,
Obiden and -- Obama and Biden campaigned from one end of the country to
the other for two years criticizing our Iraq policy.

CHENEY: They opposed the surge that was absolutely crucial to our
getting to the point we're at now with respect to Iraq. And for them to
try to take credit for what's happened in Iraq strikes me as a little
strange. I think if -- if they had had their way, if we'd followed the
policies they'd pursued from the outset or advocated from the outset,
Saddam Hussein would still be in power in Baghdad today.

So if they're going to take credit for it, fair enough, for what
they've done while they're there, but it ought to go with a healthy dose
of "Thank you, George Bush" up front and a recognition that some of
their early recommendations, with respect to prosecuting that war, we're
just dead wrong.

KARL: Well, in fact, Vice President Biden says that he believes
that the war in Iraq was not worth it. What do you say to that? I
mean, given the resources that were drawn away from the -- what you
could argue is the central front in Afghanistan, Pakistan, is he right
about that?

CHENEY: No. I -- I believe very deeply in the proposition that
what we did in Iraq was the right thing to do. It was hard to do. It
took a long time. There were significant costs involved.

But we got rid of one of the worst dictators of the 20th century. We
took down his government, a man who'd produced and used weapons of mass
destruction, a man who'd started two different wars, a man who had a
relationship with terror. We're going to have a democracy in Iraq
today. We do today. They're going to have another free election this
March.

This has been an enormous achievement from the standpoint of peace
and stability in the Middle East and ending a threat to the United
States. Now, as I say, Joe Biden doesn't believe that. Joe Biden wants
to take credit -- I'm not sure for what -- since he opposed that policy
pretty much from the outset.

KARL: I think what he wants to take credit for is taking resources
out of Iraq, the fact...

CHENEY: That's being done in accordance with a timetable that we
initiated, that we -- that we negotiated with -- with the Iraqis. I
mean, that was our policy.

KARL: Another thing from the vice president, he also addressed the
possibility of another 9/11-style attack.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: The idea of there being a massive attack in the United
States like 9/11 is unlikely, in my view. But if you see what's
happening, particularly with Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, they
have decided to move in a direction of much more small-bore, but
devastatingly frightening attacks.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KARL: Is he right?

CHENEY: I don't think so. And I would point to a study that was
released just within the last week or two up at the Kennedy School at
Harvard by a gentleman -- Mowatt-Larssen's his name, I believe. He was
CIA for 23 years, director of intelligence at the Energy Department for
a long time, that looks at this whole question of weapons of mass
destruction and Al Qaida and comes to the conclusion that there's a very
high threat that Al Qaida is trying very hard to acquire a weapon of
mass destruction and, if they're successful in acquiring it, that they
will use it.

I think he's right. I think, in fact, the situation with respect to
Al Qaida to say that, you know, that was a big attack we had on 9/11,
but it's not likely again, I just think that's dead wrong. I think the
biggest strategic threat the United States faces today is the
possibility of another 9/11 with a nuclear weapon or a biological agent
of some kind, and I think Al Qaida is out there even as we meet trying
to figure out how to do that.

KARL: And do you think that the Obama administration is taking
enough serious steps to prevent that?

CHENEY: I think they need to do everything they can to prevent it.
And if the mindset is it's not likely, then it's difficult to mobilize
the resources and get people to give it the kind of priority that it
deserves.

KARL: OK, let's get to -- you mentioned Eric Holder, the treatment
of the Christmas Day underwear bomber. How do you think that case
should have been dealt with?

CHENEY: I think the -- the proper way to -- to deal with it would
have been to treat him as an enemy combatant. I think that was the
right way to go.

The thing I learned from watching that process unfold, though, was
that the administration really wasn't equipped to deal with the
aftermath of an attempted attack against the United States in the sense
that they didn't know what to do with the guy.

There was talk earlier after they'd dismantled the system we'd put
in place for prisoner interrogation of high-value detainees. They'd gone
out supposedly to create the HIG, high-value interrogation program, but
in reality, it was not up and running at Christmastime when it should
have been. It started months before that, to put that in place.
They need a process, a set of institutions that they can fall back on.
Admittedly, this is hard. We had a hard time dealing with this. You've
got the Supreme Court on one side that -- that is going to evaluate
everything you do, and you've got to be careful with that. The Congress
gets involved in it.

CHENEY: So I'm not saying it's an easy task, but by this point,
when they've made all the decisions they've had, closed Guantanamo, end
(ph) the high-value detainee program and so forth, I think those are all
mistakes. Those were the tools we put in place to deal with this kind
of situation. They should have had something to put in lieu of those
programs, and it would look like they do not have -- have that kind of
capability yet.

KARL: If you have somebody in custody like Abdulmutallab, after
just trying to blow up an airliner, and you think he has information on
another attack, I mean, do you think that those enhanced interrogation
techniques should have been -- should have been used? I mean, would you
-- do you think that he should have been, for instance, subject to
everything, including waterboarding?

CHENEY: Well, I think the -- the professionals need to make that
judgment. We've got people in -- we had in our administration -- I'm
sure they're still there -- many of them were career personnel -- who
are expects in this subject. And they are the ones that you ought to
turn somebody like Abdulmutallab over to, let them be the judge of
whether or not he's prepared to cooperate and how they can best achieve
his cooperation.

KARL: But you believe they should have had the option of everything
up to and including waterboarding?

CHENEY: I think you ought to have all of those capabilities on the
table. Now, President Obama has taken them off the table. He announced
when he came in last year that they would never use anything other than
the U.S. Army manual, which doesn't include those techniques. I think
that's a mistake.

KARL: OK. So -- so was it a mistake when your administration took
on the Richard Reid case? This is very similar. This was somebody that
was trying to blow up an airliner with a shoe bomb, and he was within
five minutes of getting taken off that plane read his Miranda rights,
four times, in fact, in 48 hours, and tried through the civilian
system. Was that a mistake?

CHENEY: Well, first of all, I believe he was not tried. He pled
guilty. They never did end up having a trial.

Secondly, when this came up, as I recall, it was December of '01,
just a couple of months after 9/11. We were not yet operational with
the military commissions. We hadn't had all the Supreme Court decisions
handed down about what we could and couldn't do with the commissions.

KARL: But you still had an option to put him into military custody.

CHENEY: Well, we could have put him into military custody. I don't
-- I don't question that. The point is, in this particular case, all of
that was never worked out, primarily because he pled guilty.

KARL: Now, I'd like to read you something that the sentencing judge
reading the -- giving him his life sentence read to Richard Reid at the
time of that sentencing. Here it is. He said to Reid, "You are not an
enemy combatant. You are a terrorist. You are not a soldier in any
war. To give you that reference, to call you a soldier gives you far
too much stature. We do not negotiate with terrorists. We hunt them
down one by one and bring them to justice."

The judge in that case was a Reagan appointee. Doesn't he make a
good point?

CHENEY: Well, I don't think so, in a sense that it -- if it -- if
you interpret that as taking you to the point where all of these people
are going to be treated as though they're guilty of individual criminal
acts.

I want to come back again to the basic point I tried to make at the
outset, John. And up until 9/11, all terrorist attacks were criminal
acts. After 9/11, we made the decision that these were acts of war,
these were strategic threats to the United States.

Once you make that judgment, then you can use a much broader range
of tools, in terms of going after your adversary. You go after those
who provide them safe harbor and sanctuary. You go after those who
finance and those who provide weapons for them and those who train
them. And you treat them as unlawful enemy combatants.

There's a huge distinction here in terms of the kinds of policies
you put in place going forward. And what I'm most concerned about isn't
so much argument about all the stuff in the past, about what happened to
Abdulmutallab or Richard Reid. I think the relevant point is: What are
the policies going to be going forward?

And if you're really serious and you believe this is a war and if
you believe the greatest threat is a 9/11 with nukes or a 9/11 with a
biological agent of some kind, then you have to consider it as a war,
you have to consider it as something we may have to deal with tomorrow.
You don't want the vice president of the United States running around
saying, "Oh, it's not likely to happen."

KARL: Now, on that question of trying, you know, dealing as enemy
combatants or through the criminal justice system, I came across this.
This is a document that was put out by the Bush Justice Department under
Attorney General Ashcroft...

CHENEY: Right.

KARL: ... covering the years 2001 to 2005. And if you go right to
page one, they actually tout the criminal prosecutions...

CHENEY: They did.

KARL: ... of terror suspects, saying, "Altogether, the department
has brought charges against 375 individuals in terrorism- related
investigations and has convicted 195 to date." That was 2005. Again,
seems to make the administration's point that they're not doing it all
that differently from how you were doing it.

CHENEY: Well, we didn't all agree with that. We had -- I can
remember a meeting in the Roosevelt Room in the West Wing of the White
House where we had a major shootout over how this was going to be
handled between the Justice Department, that advocated that approach,
and many of the rest of us, who wanted to treat it as an intelligence
matter, as an act of war with military commissions.

We never clearly or totally resolved those issues. These are tough
questions, no doubt about it. You want my opinion, my view of what
ought to happen, I think we have to treat it as a -- as a war. This is a
strategic threat to the United States. I think that's why we were
successful for seven-and-a-half years in avoiding a further major attack
against the United States.

And I do get very nervous and very upset when that's the dominant
approach, as it was sometimes in the Bush administration or certainly
would appear to be at times in the new Obama administration.

KARL: Did you more often win or lose those battles, especially as
you got to the second term?

CHENEY: Well, I suppose it depends on which battle you're talking
about. I won some; I lost some. I can't...

(CROSSTALK)

KARL: ... waterboarding, clearly, what was your...

CHENEY: I was a big supporter of waterboarding. I was a big
supporter of the enhanced interrogation techniques that...

KARL: And you opposed the administration's actions of doing away
with waterboarding?

CHENEY: Yes.

KARL: I'd like to ask you about the big terror case now, which is
the KSM trial. The administration very much wants to see the mastermind
of 9/11 tried in civilian courts here in the United States. New York has
obviously objected.

Do you think that's going to happen? Do you think this will be a
civilian trial? Or are they not going to be able to do it?

CHENEY: It looks to me like they're going to have great difficulty
doing it in New York. I mean, even the mayor's come out against it
now. I think trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in New York's a big -- big
mistake. It gives him a huge platform to promulgate his -- his
particular brand of propaganda around the world.

I think he ought to be at Guantanamo. I think he ought to be tried
at Guantanamo in front of a military commission. They've got
difficulties now, because my guess is they don't want to send him back
to Guantanamo, because that would validate, if you will, the value of
Guantanamo. They're trying to close it, clearly haven't been able to
get it done.

But my guess is, in the end, he'll end up being tried in front of a
military commission on a military facility some place.

KARL: So you think Guantanamo will be open when this president
leaves office?

CHENEY: I wouldn't be surprised. It's a valuable facility. There's
a reason why we set it up. It makes good sense. There's obviously
great reluctance on Capitol Hill to appropriate the funds to close it
down. I think -- I think Guantanamo is going to be there for quite a while.

KARL: And one other point -- I just want to read also from a
previous interview that you gave -- one of your points about Guantanamo
is, if you release the hard-core Al Qaida terrorists, you said, that are
held at Guantanamo, I think they go back into the business of trying to
kill more Americans and mount further mass casualty attacks. If you
turn them loose and they go kill more Americans, who's responsible for
that?

And it's a real concern. We've heard from the president's homeland
security adviser, John Brennan, saying that at minimum 10 percent of the
more than 500 that have been released from Guantanamo have gone back
into the fight.

But Brennan also wrote this. He said, "I want to underscore the
fact that all of these cases relate to detainees released during the
previous administration and under the prior detainee review process."

In other words, all of those released from Guantanamo that have gone
back into the fight were released by your administration. Can't you
make the case that the Obama administration has actually been more
responsible about releasing who they release from Guantanamo?

CHENEY: I wouldn't make that -- I wouldn't make that case, John. I
think -- as I recall, the percentage that we had of the recidivists was
12 percent. And we released prisoners back basically to their home
countries, partly because the State Department was under enormous
pressure to do so, and there was an effort to try to return them. The
Saudis had a rehabilitation program for returned Saudis, and...

KARL: Did you oppose those releases?

CHENEY: I did. I didn't think that releasing anybody was the right
thing to do, unless you had evidence that, you know, there was a mistake
of some kind or they'd been -- been before a commission and you'd
reviewed their case and found that the case didn't stand up, and that
was usually the case. They were put through a thorough scrub before
they were released.

Obviously, some of them got through the filter. But I think, out of
the ones that remain, those are the real hard core, and I think your
recidivist rate would be far higher than it was on those that have
already been released.

It's a tough problem; I'll be the first to admit it. But I think
you have to have a facility like Guantanamo to hold these individuals
who are members of Al Qaida, who've tried to kill Americans, and who --
when they're released, they'll go back out and try to kill Americans again.

KARL: I'd like to move to Iran. Do you trust the Obama
administration to do what is necessary to keep Iran from getting nuclear
weapons?

CHENEY: I remain to be persuaded.

KARL: Do you think that sanctions can work? I mean, that's the
track they've chosen.

CHENEY: Well, I think -- I hope sanctions work.

KARL: It's the same track you chose (ph).

CHENEY: We -- I certainly would hope sanctions would work, but I
think they're most likely to work if you keep the military option on the
table. I don't think you want to eliminate the military -- the
possibility of military action. I think that's essential to give any
kind of meaning at all to negotiations over sanctions.

KARL: How close did you come -- how close did the Bush
administration come to taking military action against Iran?

CHENEY: Well, I would -- some of that I can't talk about,
obviously, still. I'm sure it's still classified. We clearly never
made the decision -- we never crossed over that line of saying, "Now
we're going to mount a military operation to deal with the problem."

The president was always hopeful -- and I think everybody else was,
too -- that we could find a way to deal with it within having to resort
to military force. One of the problems that the Obama administration
inherited was the Iranian problem, and it's a tough one.

KARL: David Sanger of the New York Times says that the Israelis
came to you -- came to the administration in the final months and asked
for certain things, bunker-buster bombs, air-to-air refueling
capability, overflight rights, and that basically the administration
dithered, did not give the Israelis a response. Was that a mistake?

CHENEY: I -- I can't get into it still. I'm sure a lot of those
discussions are still very sensitive.

KARL: Let me ask you: Did you advocate a harder line, including in
the military area, in those -- in those final months?

CHENEY: Usually.

KARL: And with respect to Iran?

CHENEY: Well, I -- I made public statements to the effect that I
felt very strongly that we had to have the military option, that it had
to be on the table, that it had to be a meaningful option, and that we
might well have to resort to military force in order to deal with the
threat that Iran represented. The problem here being that a
nuclear-armed Iran is a huge threat to that entire part of the world
and, indeed, to the United States.

KARL: Was it -- was it a...

CHENEY: We never got to the point where the president had to make a
decision one way or the other.

KARL: Was that a mistake? Was it a mistake to leave that nuclear
capability intact?

CHENEY: Well, we -- we did a lot, because we were very concerned
about nuclear capability in the hands of rogue states or potentially
shared with terrorist organizations, and we were successful in taking
down, for example, Saddam Hussein, who had messed with nuclear weapons
twice previously, taking down the A.Q. Khan network, a black-market
operation that was providing technology to the North Koreans, Iranians,
and Libyans. We successfully obtained all the Libyan materials for
their nuclear program, so we got a lot done.

We didn't get everything done. We still -- when we finished, there
still was the ongoing Iranian problem and the ongoing North Korean
problem. Both of them remain to be addressed.

KARL: I'd like to get your response to Sarah Palin's recent
comments on Iran.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PALIN: Say he decided to declare war on Iran or decided really to
come out and do whatever he could to support Israel, which I would like
him to do, if he decided to toughen up and do all that he can to secure
our nation and our allies, I think people would perhaps shift their
thinking a little bit and decide, well, maybe he's tougher than we think
he -- than he is today.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KARL: She's, of course, talking about President Obama, seemed to be
implying that this would be a good political move for him. What's your
take?

CHENEY: I don't think a president can make a judgment like that on
the basis of politics. The stakes are too high, the consequences too
significant to be treating those as simple political calculations. When
you begin to talk about war, talk about crossing international borders,
you talk about committing American men and women to combat, that takes
place on a plane clear above any political consideration.

KARL: So...

CHENEY: So I'd be -- I'd be very cautious about treating that kind
of issue on those kinds of conditions.

KARL: We're almost out of time. We're going to get you very
quickly on a few other subjects. First of all, one more on Palin. Is
she qualified to be president?

CHENEY: I haven't made a decision yet on who I'm going to support
for president the next time around. Whoever it is, is going to have to
prove themselves capable of being president of the United States. And
those tests will -- will come during the course of campaigns,
obviously. I think -- well, I think all the prospective candidates out
there have got a lot of work to do if, in fact, they're going to
persuade a majority of Americans that they're ready to take on the
world's toughest job.

CHENEY: Twenty years ago, the military were strong advocates of
"don't ask/don't tell," when I was secretary of defense. I think things
have changed significantly since then. I see that Don Mullen -- or Mike
Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has indicated his
belief that we ought to support a change in the policy. So I think -- my
guess is the policy will be changed.

KARL: And do you think that's a good thing? I mean, is it time to
allow gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military?

CHENEY: I think the society has moved on. I think it's partly a
generational question. I say, I'm reluctant to second-guess the
military in this regard, because they're the ones that have got to make
the judgment about how these policies affect the military capability of
our -- of our units, and that first requirement that you have to look at
all the time is whether or not they're still capable of achieving their
mission, and does the policy change, i.e., putting gays in the force,
affect their ability to perform their mission?

When the chiefs come forward and say, "We think we can do it," then
it strikes me that it's -- it's time to reconsider the policy. And I
think Admiral Mullen said that.

KARL: And, finally, I know that you have a reunion coming up later
this month with President Bush. This'll be the first time you've seen
him since leaving office, face to face?

CHENEY: Pretty much, yes. We talk on the telephone periodically,
but the first time I've seen him since January 20th.

KARL: What does he think of you being so outspoken in contrast to him?

CHENEY: Well, I don't think he's opposed to it, by any means. I'd
be inclined to let him speak for himself about it. The reason I've been
outspoken is because there were some things being said, especially after
we left office, about prosecuting CIA personnel that had carried out our
counterterrorism policy or disbarring lawyers in the Justice Department
who had -- had helped us put those policies together, and I was deeply
offended by that, and I thought it was important that some senior person
in the administration stand up and defend those people who'd done what
we asked them to do.

And that's why I got started on it. I'm the vice president now --
ex-vice president. I have the great freedom and luxury of speaking out,
saying what I -- what I want to say, what I believe. And I have not
been discouraged from doing so.

KARL: And that includes writing a book?

CHENEY: Writing a book, that's correct.

KARL: Can you give us -- before you go -- a quick nugget that's
going to be in the book, give us the title, give us something going?

CHENEY: Have me back about a year from now, and I'll have a copy of
the book for you, John.

KARL: OK, it's deal.

CHENEY: All right.

KARL: Mr. Vice President, thanks a lot for joining us on "This Week."

CHENEY: Good to see you. I've enjoyed it.

KARL: The roundtable is next, George Will, Paul Gigot, Jane Mayer,
and Peter Beinart. And later, the Sunday funnies.